el paso

After last Friday's meltdown, I spent much of Saturday and Sunday exploring El Paso. Since I seem to have trouble formatting the pictures with the words, this post is mostly pictures.

There's some great murals on buildings here. Is this the Virgin Mary holding a US flag?
A downtown El Paso park. The palm trees surprised me here, since I think of them as tropical.
The border between the US and Mexico. You can cross the bridge for a toll--pedestrians are $.35 each. Even though the price was right, I don't have the right documents, and the border guard told me that it's not terribly safe right now anyway.

A building in the historic downtown.
Another picture of the downtown park, in case you're getting seasick with my experimental angles.
This mountain overlooks the part of town where I'm staying. I'm told that it's quite pretty at night at the top because you can see all around--New Mexico, Mexico, etc.
Mata's fruit store right on the border. Since I couldn't cross, I thought I'd go in and experience the culture there. I was the only white girl in the store. And, Mata doesn't sell a whole lot of fruit, but there were some fresh tortillas, and some yummy looking pan dulce, or pastries. It was enormously crowded, and people "stand" in line at the check out by putting their basket down and then going off to find other things to put in it. I started standing in a line that I thought was pretty short, only to discover that I had "cut" in front of 4 other baskets that were on the floor.

This is pretty much what I expected most of the buildings here to look like. They are mostly not like this, though.

Some of the houses in a neighborhood not far from Casa. I like the desert "lawns," mostly rock or pavement, with a few artfully placed desert plants. It seem so practical to not have to water much of anything here. I am missing the green of home, though.